Albert Schweitzer Quotes (1875-1965)

“If I save an insect from a puddle, life has devoted itself to life, and the division of life against itself is ended.”

“Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life — it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.”

“What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.”

“Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now — always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances. Care for distress at home and care for distress elsewhere do but help each other if, working together, they wake men in sufficient numbers from their thoughtlessness, and call into life a new spirit of humanity.”

“One of us, I no longer remember which one, began to speak of the spiritual decline of culture as the fundamental, unremarked problem of our times. We realized that both of us were occupied with this question; neither had expected this of the other. A lively discussion ensued. Each of us experienced from one another that we had taken on the same mission in life: to strive for the rise of true culture enlivened and formed by humane ideals, and to stimulate people to become truly thoughtful human beings. We took leave of one another in this consciousness of solidarity....We each followed one another's work. To take part in Rudolf Steiner's high flight of thought of spiritual science was not given to me. I know, however, that in this he lifted up and renewed many people, and his disciples attained exceptional accomplishments in many realms. I have rejoiced at the achievement which his great personality and his profound humanity have brought about in the world.Einer von uns beiden, ich weiß nicht mehr, welcher, kam darauf, vom geistigen Niedergang der Kultur als dem fundamentalen, unbeachteten Problem unserer Zeit zu sprechen. Da erfuhren wir, dass wir beide mit ihm beschäftigt waren. Keiner hatte es von dem anderen erwartet. Eine lebhafte Aussprache kam alsbald in Gang. Einer von dem anderen erfuhren wir, dass wir uns als Lebensaufgabe dasselbe vornahmen, sich um das Aufkommen der wahren, vom Humanitätsideal belebten und beherrschten Kultur zu bemühen, und die Menschen dazu anzuhalten, wahrhaft denkende Menschen zu werden. In diesem Bewusstsein der Zusammengehörigkeit verabschiedeten wir uns. (...) das Bewusstsein der Zusammengehörigkeit blieb. Ein jeder verfolgte das Wirken des andern. Rudolf Steiners hohen Gedankenflug der Geisteswissenschaft mitzumachen, war mir nicht verliehen. Ich weiß aber, dass er in diesem so manchen Menschen mit emporriss und neue Menschen aus ihnen machte. In seiner Jüngerschaft sind hervorragende Leistungen auf so manchem Gebiete vollbracht worden.”

“Few authors in modern times can be said to have redirected the course of an entire field of study. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer did, with his brilliant monograph, ''The Quest of the Historical Jesus'''''... Schweitzer was convinced that Jesus was an apocalypticist. Schweitzer is best known, of course, for his humanitarian endeavors. After giving up an extraordinarily promising academic career as a philosopher-theologian in Strasbourg to establish a medical mission in French Equatorial Africa, he spent his life curing the sick in his jungle clinic, far removed from the ivy towers of the European intellectual scene. ... The bulk of his book recounts the attempts since the Enlightenment to produce a life of Jesus. With scathing wit, penetrating analysis, and inimitable turns of phrase, Schweitzer shows that every generation of scholars that attempted to write a life of Jesus in fact portrayed Jesus in its own image.''' ... Schweitzer demonstrates this thesis through an exhaustive analysis of the entire history of scholarship on Jesus—from its beginnings in 1776 with a posthumously published account of a German scholar named H. Reimarus, who argued that Jesus was a political revolutionary whose violent activities were covered up by the Gospel writers, to the rationalist views of Heinrich Paulus and the myth-oriented response of D. F. Strauss... on down to his own day. ... he scorns every attempt to make Jesus into a modern man, who promoted, in substance, the religious, political, cultural, or social agenda of modern European intellectuals. For Schweitzer, Jesus was a man of the past. To understand what he was really like, we must situate him in his own context, not pretend that he fits perfectly well into our own. ... Schweitzer did not think that the historical Jesus shared the problems or perspectives of the twentieth century. Instead, Jesus was a first-century apocalypticist, who never expected that there would be a twentieth century. He thought that the end of the world was coming within his own lifetime. In fact, he expected it to come before the year was out. When it didn't come, Schweitzer argued, Jesus decided that he himself needed to suffer in order for God to bring the heavenly Kingdom here to earth. And so he went to his cross fully expecting God to intervene in history in a climactic act of judgment. When at his last meal he told his disciples that he would not drink wine again until he drank it anew with them in the Kingdom, he was not thinking that this would be two thousand years hence, but in the next day or two. It turns out that Jesus was wrong. He died on the cross mistaken about his own identity and the plan of God.”